


The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret

by Devilc



Category: Friday Night Lights, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Crossover, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-09
Updated: 2010-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-06 01:37:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/pseuds/Devilc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By chance Derek stumbles upon a secret that could change the fate of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 5 of sccxovers "Twelve Days of Christmas" challenge. Thanks to thisisbone for the beta.

_The Engineer got a job building the vault. So we'd always have a way back home._

_ ~Cameron, Pilot episode~_

***

It's a simple memorial tattoo, really. A tombstone with a little basic shading, crowned with skulls and roses, containing the names of the other Four Horsemen plus Kyle's, inked in an elegant script on his left forearm.

His tattooist isn't much for talking, and that's a good thing, because Derek can't go into a lot of details about who these people were, what war they fought in, and what they meant to him without letting something slip.

He turns his attention to the three guys next to him, friends fresh out of high school getting tattoos. Two of them are already done, their upper arms covered in saran wrap, and they're shooting the shit, waiting for their buddy to be done with his.

One of them's a strawberry blond, bleached flaxen by the sun and peeling from a burn. His name is Landry and he's got a motormouth and a Texas twang that won't quit.

His companion, Matt, rolls his light brown eyes every now and again at one of the more outrageous things Landry says. He has a thin, sensitive face and his voice has a less pronounced drawl. He's mostly happy to stand with his arms crossed and let Landry and the other guy, Tim, do most of the talking. Or, rather, let Landry do the talking and let Tim punctuate it with occasional snarky comments.

Derek can't see Tim's face; it's turned away from him, looking at his buddies, but he's got longer, almost shaggy light brown hair, and he's built. Derek sees his muscled forearm and a powerful looking fist clenching and flexing with the pain. Apparently, he's getting a more elaborate tattoo than his friends.

Three Texas boys getting tattoos on their last weekend together before they head off to three different California Universities: UC Berkeley, SDSU, and Cal-Poly.

There's no reason for it, but something about them nags at Derek.

Tim says to Matt and Landry -- only he doesn't call them Matt and Landry but "Seven" and "Eight-Five" respectively -- that they should at least try for walk-on positions for the football teams at their colleges, because, even though they're not going on football scholarships, they are still Texas State Champs, and that's got to mean something, "even on the left coast."

And as they start to tell him why that's pointless, Tim says, "Sorry, not paying attention," and turns his head away, his tawny hazel eyes meeting Derek's in a piercing gaze for a split second before he closes them against the pain. He's got a face like an angel's, and a sick churning begins in Derek's guts because he knows he's seen Tim's face before. Knows now he's seen all of their faces before.

It falls into place a few minutes later when Matt asks Landry to explain something that's been bugging him about the movie they watched last night, and Landry launches into a spiel about time-travel paradoxes, string theory, wormholes, and the curvature of time and space.

Derek hasn't seen them _before_. He's seen them _after_.

Sometime in the near future, the three of them will pose for a picture.

Matt will face the camera with one arm loosely slung over Tim's shoulder, and he'll smile almost shyly at whoever's taking the picture.

Tim will stand with his body turned sideways, giving a clear view of his tattoos: a Texas flag with "Texas Forever" written on it, and beneath it, on a scroll, the words, "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose". He'll be laughing, smiling so big he shows dimples.

The reason for that smile is that he's just goosed Landry, who will have bug eyes and a mouth open in a perfect O of surprise.

Twenty years from now that snapshot, battered and creased, will hang in The Engineer's workroom and Derek will ask him about it.

The Engineer doesn't know for sure what happened to his friends. He doesn't even give their names, doesn't go into details, just says that there's no record of their deaths, or of them ever having been processed at a work camp, that they probably died on Judgment Day or shortly thereafter and got shoveled into a mass grave. There's a slim possibility they're still alive, but The Engineer doesn't hold out much hope for that. However, he still searches any new lists of the living or dead he can find.

The Engineer keeps his head clean shaven and the left side of his face and temple are scarred from a plasma burn. He's lucky to have both eyes. He still has the same motto all of them got that day -- _Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose_ \-- tattooed on his arm. He has no barcode.

He can still motormouth in that Texas twang, especially when he's working through a problem. At those times, the ideas seem to enter his head and pour out of his mouth with hardly any filtration between. But even when he has that Eureka!-I've-found-it moment -- Derek happened to be in the room when he had the insight that allowed him to reverse engineer Skynet's time displacement equipment from the fragments of the machine before him -- there's a haunted sadness that never leaves his eyes.

Derek forces his face to neutrality, forces himself not to gape, rips his eyes away from the three of them.

The Engineer is a genius. He's made the Resistance possible as much as John Connor has. He's the reason Derek's here. He's the reason the Resistance has any chance of re-writing the past.

Skynet would love to find him. Skynet would love to know his name. Hell, even John doesn't know his name or what he did before. The Engineer won't say; even at his most motormouthy, he steadfastly refuses to give any real details about his past life. (Frankly, Derek was surprised to find out as much as he did when he asked The Engineer about that picture.) It's quite possible that nobody living in 2027 knows his name, and, as sad as that thought is, it's safer for everybody that way. No loose lips can sink The Engineer's ship.

Derek doesn't say a word when John and Cameron come through the door about five minutes later. They don't pay any special attention to the boys beyond a quick glance to assess and then rule them out as hostiles. Derek pays the tattooist and leaves without a backwards glance.

On the drive home the thoughts tumble through his mind. Once upon a time The Engineer was an eighteen-year-old goofball from Texas named Landry, who played football in high school, came to California to go to college, and got tattooed with his buddies Matt and Tim.

They were Texas State Football Champions.

The Engineer's full name is just a Google search away.

But Derek won't.

For everybody's sake, he'll be taking this one to the grave.


End file.
